FREEZING OF A QUANTUM HARD-SPHERE LIQUID AT ZERO TEMPERATURE - A DENSITY-FUNCTIONAL APPROACH

Quantum freezing of the Bose hard-sphere liquid is described by an extension of the classical modified weighted-density approximation to nonuniform quantum liquids at zero temperature. The theory requires structural and thermodynamic information for the corresponding uniform quantum liquid, which we have chosen to take, for the purpose of illustration, from the paired phonon analysis. Predictions for solid-phase energies and for freezing parameters are in generally good agreement with available simulation data. © 1990 The American Physical Society.